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UNICEF takes 12 top bloggers to visit orchard school projects in Chiang Mai

UNICEF Thailand is taking 12 well-known Thai web bloggers to visit a UNICEF-supported education project for the children of migrant orchard workers in Chiang Mai's Fang district. The trip will run from Thursday, 6 October, to Saturday, 8 October.

The bloggers include Chudaorn Ubolsmut (or Maymey); Chainat Sukchaiya from PYNK FM; Nakareeya Duangvisut from Jeban; Sresuda Vinijsuwan from MCOT; Thanaboon “Ace” Somboon; and “mommy” blogger Wallapa Jarungpornsawad. The bloggers’ interests range from children and families to current affairs and beauty.

It will be the first time UNICEF Thailand has hosted a project site visit for bloggers.

“We hope that the bloggers, after seeing the work UNICEF supports, will be able to help bring our messages about the importance of ensuring the right to an education for all children in Thailand to a much wider audience,” said UNICEF Thailand Representative Tomoo Hozumi. “We also hope that the bloggers will be able to help move and motivate people to support the work we carry out.”

The bloggers’ trip is being sponsored by Sansiri Plc., a leading real estate developer and corporate partner of UNICEF Thailand.

The orchard schools project is supported by UNICEF, the Group for Children, an NGO, and Chiang Mai’s Education Service Area Office (ESAO) 3. Under the project, a basic education is being provided to migrant children whose parents fled poverty and deprivation in Myanmar’s Shan State to work in the orchards of Chiang Mai’s Fang district, one of Thailand’s largest orange production areas.

Before the project was initiated a few years ago, most of the children now benefitting from it had no opportunity to receive an education, either because their parents did not see the importance of education or because their parents could not afford to send them to school. As a result, many of the children ended working alongside their parents in the orchards.

There are now seven orchard schools being supported under the project. Two schools provide an education for 130 children ranging in age from 2-13 years old during the day, and five schools that offer night classes for about 200 teenagers and parents who work in the orchards during the day.